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Radar journey to centre of Hera’s asteroid with Juventas CubeSat
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By European Space Agency
While performing yesterday’s flyby of Mars, ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence made the first use of its payload for scientific purposes beyond Earth and the Moon. Activating a trio of instruments, Hera imaged the surface of the red planet as well as the face of Deimos, the smaller and more mysterious of Mars’s two moons.
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:01:36 On Wednesday 12 March 2025 ESA’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence performs a flyby of Mars. The gravity of the red planet shifts the spacecraft’s trajectory towards its final destination of the Didymos binary asteroid system, shortening its trip by months and saving substantial fuel.
Watch the livestream release of images from Hera’s flyby by the mission’s science team on Thursday 13 March, starting at 11:50 CET!
Hera comes to around 5000 km from the surface of Mars during its flyby. It will also image Deimos, the smaller of Mars’s two moons, from a minimum 1000 km away (while venturing as close as 300 km). Hera will also image Mars’s larger moon Phobos as it begins to move away from Mars.
Launched on 7 October 2024, Hera on its way to visit the first asteroid to have had its orbit altered by human action. By gathering close-up data about the Dimorphos asteroid, which was impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft in 2022, Hera will help turn asteroid deflection into a well understood and potentially repeatable technique.
Hera will reach the Didymos asteroid and its Dimorphos moonlet in December 2026. By gathering crucial missing data during its close-up crash scene investigation, Hera will turn the kinetic impact method of asteroid deflection into a well understood technique that could potentially be used for real when needed.
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By NASA
2 min read
NASA Selects Participating Scientists to Join Lucy Asteroid Mission
NASA has selected eight participating scientists to join its Lucy mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are remnants of our early solar system trapped on stable orbits associated with – but not close to – the planet Jupiter.
The first mission to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. NASA’s Lucy in the L4 Trojans Participating Scientist Program supports scientists to carry out new investigations that address outstanding questions related to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids as part of the Lucy mission. Launched in 2021, the Lucy spacecraft is currently on its way to the L4 Trojan swarm, which leads Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun. This is the first selection of Lucy participating scientists, who will become mission science team members for the four major asteroid encounters that the Lucy spacecraft will have in the L4 swarm in 2027 and 2028, and who will remain on the team for subsequent scientific analysis until 2030.
The newly selected participating scientists are:
Harrison Agrusa, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France Benjamin Byron, University of Central Florida in Orlando Emily Costello, University of Hawaii, Honolulu Masatoshi Hirabayashi, Georgia Tech Research Corporation [TSS1] in Atlanta Fiona Nichols-Fleming, Smithsonian Institution in Washington Norbert Schorghofer, Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona Jennifer Scully, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California Anne Verbiscer, University of Virginia, Charlottesville Lucy’s principal investigator, Hal Levison, is based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built and operates the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
For more information on NASA’s Lucy mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/lucy
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The Lucy Spacecraft
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has its next flyby target, the small main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, in its sights. By blinking between images captured by Lucy on Feb. 20 and 22, this animation shows the perceived motion of Donaldjohanson relative to the background stars as the spacecraft rapidly approaches the asteroid.
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft’s first views of the asteroid Donaldjohanson. The asteroid is circled on the left to guide the eye.NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL Lucy will pass within 596 miles (960 km) of the 2-mile-wide asteroid on April 20. This second asteroid encounter for the Lucy spacecraft will serve as a dress-rehearsal for the spacecraft’s main targets, the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Lucy already successfully observed the tiny main belt asteroid Dinkinesh and its contact-binary moon, Selam, in November 2023. Lucy will continue to image Donaldjohanson over the next two months as part of its optical navigation program, which uses the asteroid’s apparent position against the star background to ensure an accurate flyby.
Donaldjohanson will remain an unresolved point of light during the spacecraft’s long approach and won’t start to show surface detail until the day of the encounter.
From a distance of 45 million miles (70 million km), Donaldjohanson is still dim, though it stands out clearly in this field of relatively faint stars in the constellation of Sextans. Celestial north is to the right of the frame, and the 0.11-degree field of view would correspond to 85,500 miles (140,000 km) at the distance of the asteroid. In the first of the two images, another dim asteroid can be seen photobombing in the lower right quadrant of the image. However, just as the headlights of an approaching car often appear relatively stationary, Donaldjohanson’s apparent motion between these two images is much smaller than that of this interloper, which has moved out of the field of view in the second image.
These observations were made by Lucy’s high-resolution camera, the L’LORRI instrument — short for Lucy LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager — provided by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Asteroid Donaldjohanson is named for anthropologist Donald Johanson, who discovered the fossilized skeleton — called “Lucy” — of a human ancestor. NASA’s Lucy mission is named for the fossil.
Lucy’s principal investigator, Hal Levison, is based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
For more information about NASA’s Lucy mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/lucy
By Katherine Kretke
Southwest Research Institute
Media Contact:
Nancy N. Jones
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Feb 25, 2025 Related Terms
Lucy General Goddard Space Flight Center Planetary Science The Solar System Trojan Asteroids View the full article
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